Sclater and MacDonald (2004) provide a simple definition of an item bank:
a collection of items for a particular assessment, subject or educational sector, classified by metadata which facilitates searching and automated test creation.
There is a need to define more closely the various elements and attributes of the item bank itself and to show how an item bank might fit into the larger picture of a distributed national (or even international) item bank infrastructure. This paper examines these issues. The Item Bank Infrastructure Study (IBIS) expands on this vision more fully and is available from www.toia.ac.uk/ibis.